Calvin: I’m excited about buying toys in New Zealand. I will buy transformers there because I’m not allowed to buy them here.

Evelyn: Being in a different season—having winter in the summer and summer in the winter.

Charlotte: I am excited about making new friends. I’ll make new friends at school.

What will you miss about Newark?

Calvin: I will miss my friends and my bedroom. And I will miss my else [other] toys. I can bring some but not all of them.

Evelyn: How close everything is. Like, we all know each other here; I can’t walk down a street and see someone I don’t know. Whereas in NZ, everything will be new.

Charlotte: I will miss my friends. I’ll miss my house and the fun times that we have here like Fun in the Sun at school, and field day with all my friends…

How do you think you’ll feel when you’re getting on the plane to leave?

Charlotte: I am going to feel excited and I’m also going to feel high up cuz I’m going to be flying.

Evelyn: Excited. I [also] think I would be very apprehensive about everything that I’m going to have to do. I’ll have to be more self-sufficient. I already am pretty self-sufficient, but I’ll have to be more. If that’s possible.

I depend a lot on having parents and friends to play with, and I think that since we’ll be travelling a lot, I won’t have very much time in all the places to get to know a ton of people. For example, it took years for me to find kids … what if we get to NZ and it’s a bunch of people who don’t have children living on our street, like it was [in our neighborhood] before?

When we get to NZ what do you want to do?

Charlotte: I will want to search in the house and pick out my room. I also want to play outside in our yard and make a snowman [because it’s going to be winter there]. It will be a very small snowman.

Evelyn: Explore. The house, the grounds, the city. We’ll do that by walking.

How long will we be gone?

Charlotte: 8 months.

Evelyn: 8 months. It’ll feel like a long time.

Calvin: 500 days?

What do you most want to do or see in NZ?

Evelyn: I want to go to the beach on Christmas Day.

Charlotte: I want to explore and see kiwis and penguins and other animals that live in New Zealand. I also want to go to a zoo to see more animals.

What are you nervous about?

Calvin: Not getting to play with friends at my school. I won’t get to understand all of them if they speak a different language.

Evelyn: I’m nervous about something going wrong, like a deal falling through, a major appliance failing, us getting sick during the move, there being a natural disaster… there’s a big storm while we’re supposed to be camping for part of the time. Yeah. That all worries me. I’m a worrier.

Charlotte: No. (Evelyn, inserting herself and patting Char on the head: “She’s that kind of person.”)